Free software to monitor a webcam image for changes?
February 16, 2005 8:11 AM Subscribe
I've got a new webcam, and I'd like to find some free, spyware-less software that would monitor the image and email an alert to me if it changes. Anyone know of any good programs?
I checked.. and while there have been a lot of webcam queries on askmefi, I didn't see this one.
I checked.. and while there have been a lot of webcam queries on askmefi, I didn't see this one.
I've tried this before, and it's difficult.
There are MS Windows programs that will email, but few are free. Of the one I think I recall, it was flaky.
There are linux apps (motiondetect, on sourceforge, for one) that appear to work decently, but they require a video4linux supported camera; I've not tried them.
There's also a stand-alone picture comparing utility on sourceforge (motion?) but even after going to the trouble of compiling it under cygwin -- and it was trouble, as it had dependencies on various image libraries which had dependencies on various compression libraries, and it was just painful -- it seemed to either get too many false positive or to miss real changes I'd hoped it would pick up.
There are some stand-alone MS Windows utilities that will just snap photos on an interval (fwink and dorgem both use the Windows Video APIs) -- you could then pipe the photo to another app that tested for changes above some threshold, and then invoke a program to send email. But to do this, you need a decent image comparison program, which I still haven't been able to find.
I suppose the thing to do is write an interface that adapts the Windows Video to the Video4Linux API, but I was never courageous enough to open that can of worms.
posted by orthogonality at 8:44 AM on February 16, 2005
There are MS Windows programs that will email, but few are free. Of the one I think I recall, it was flaky.
There are linux apps (motiondetect, on sourceforge, for one) that appear to work decently, but they require a video4linux supported camera; I've not tried them.
There's also a stand-alone picture comparing utility on sourceforge (motion?) but even after going to the trouble of compiling it under cygwin -- and it was trouble, as it had dependencies on various image libraries which had dependencies on various compression libraries, and it was just painful -- it seemed to either get too many false positive or to miss real changes I'd hoped it would pick up.
There are some stand-alone MS Windows utilities that will just snap photos on an interval (fwink and dorgem both use the Windows Video APIs) -- you could then pipe the photo to another app that tested for changes above some threshold, and then invoke a program to send email. But to do this, you need a decent image comparison program, which I still haven't been able to find.
I suppose the thing to do is write an interface that adapts the Windows Video to the Video4Linux API, but I was never courageous enough to open that can of worms.
posted by orthogonality at 8:44 AM on February 16, 2005
There are approximately 5 billion programs to set up various security systems with webcams in the download.com webcam section. I can't vouch for any one in specific though.
posted by Jack Karaoke at 2:15 PM on February 16, 2005
posted by Jack Karaoke at 2:15 PM on February 16, 2005
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by terrapin at 8:21 AM on February 16, 2005